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NorthWestern Energy

3010 W 69th Street, Sioux Falls, SD 57108

Company CareersDiversity & Inclusion

Our normal working hours are 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. but we have employees working 24 by 7, 365 days a days a year.

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DIVERSITY

E-Interview

In conversations with Newsweek, NorthWestern Energy's Bobbi Schroeppel, vice president of Customer Care, Communications and HR, answered the following questions:

1. Can you provide an overview of your company's workplace culture and values, and how they contribute to a positive work environment?

At NorthWestern Energy, our mission is working together to deliver safe, reliable and innovative energy solutions that create value for customers, communities, employees and investors. We are guided by our SERVICE values which include safety, excellence, respect, value, integrity, community and environment. Our success is built on employees feeling empowered to take initiative, voice their opinions and build on their experiences. We believe everyone should be treated with respect regardless of their background and hold the dignity of every individual in high regard. Respecting the differences in those around us fosters engagement, productivity and innovation. Intentionally building a culture of respect helps us attract, retain, and leverage the contributions of our talented employees.

We received the Great Place to Work certification for our 2022-23 workplace survey. Our most positive comparisons to best companies included statements that people here are treated fairly regardless of their race, gender and sexual orientation and that employees are able to take time off from work when they feel it is necessary.

According to our latest in-depth cultural survey, NorthWestern has a strong "results" and "caring" culture. Employees are driven to achieve great things and are unified by success and capability. Employees value stability and efficiency.

2. What kind of professional development and growth opportunities are available to employees? How does your company support career advancement?

NorthWestern Energy strongly believes in the development of its employees by investing significant resources in maintaining a culture that supports the ongoing development of our workforce. Along with a robust new employee training program, we also offer new employee orientation, and a chance to create a new hire development plan with your supervisor. In 2022, NorthWestern launched a leadership program called LEAD (Leading Effectively through Accountability and Development.) The company partners with FranklinCovey, a world leader in helping organizations build exceptional leaders, teams and cultures, to deliver this broad-based leadership program for all supervisors.

We also encourage personal development through tuition reimbursement. In addition, employees find our vice presidents and CEO to be very accessible, and many have personally met our board of directors through their involvement in helping build employee acumen as part of our development programs, and at employee breakfasts as part of board meetings held in locations throughout our service territory.

In addition, the company partners with many great associations, has memberships with utility resources and has subscriptions to great services that employees can use while on the job. The company also offers a robust self-learning and personal development platform, apprentice programs and in-depth on the job training.

3. How does your company ensure transparency and open communication between management and employees, fostering a sense of trust and belonging?

NorthWestern strives to be transparent to all our stakeholders including employees. We use multiple channels to communicate. The Compass is a weekly email to every supervisor. It includes leadership messages from executives and directors, development messages, and links to study topics in greater detail. In addition, all employees receive FYIs regarding important corporate news. We strive to ensure that supervisors are informed first, so they can answer questions.

Our corporate communications department publishes Bright Magazine quarterly, highlighting our communities, people, environment and future. We also host stories about our community involvement, employees and initiatives on our You Tube channel. Our employee intranet is updated frequently with employee news and updates.

Important and/or more complicated topics warrant company webinars with executives and key leadership. These include Coffee Chats with our CEO and Lunch and Learns on important topics often hosted by our vice presidents and directors. We host an annual in-person strategy session with executive and director-level leadership and an annual in person leadership summit for all leaders. The CEO and executives take regular division tours to connect with employees in our service territory.

4. How does your company handle feedback and suggestions from employees? Is there a system in place for employees to voice their concerns or ideas?

We conduct an employee engagement survey and follow up with shorter pulse surveys. Each business unit hosts feedback sessions and has in-depth action plans based on survey results. Surveys are also sent to new employees to understand their on boarding experience and terminating employees receive an exit survey, which is reviewed by Human Resources.

Through our Code of Conduct training, we share guidelines for employees to report their concerns and train supervisors to respond appropriately. Concerns can be reported through our anonymous compliance line.

Our communications team compiles FAQs on major topics, and continues to update as new issues emerge. Our supervisors conduct stay interviews to uncover employee questions and concerns as well. Our executive-led Coffee Chats always contain ample time for questions, with several ways for employees to ask questions, including anonymously.

Above all, however, we have an open-door policy, and ask employees to speak with their supervisor first, if they feel comfortable doing so. We also give employees more face-to-face time with executives than many companies, and have recently revamped our new employee orientation, giving our president and CEO and all vice presidents an opportunity to greet new employees.

5. How do you approach fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion within the organization?

We foster a culture where employees feel included and share a sense of comfort in being able to share opinions and ideas in a constructive and open manner. We take a broad view of diversity and believe that diversity of thought is critical to maintaining a healthy, innovative and results-oriented culture supported by caring for all employees and their whole well-being. All NorthWestern employees are given equal opportunity to grow and excel. Highly engaged employees are more likely to stay, advocate for the company and go the extra mile. We also have a unique opportunity to foster inclusion and diversity within the communities we serve, provide meaningful employment and career growth opportunities with above average pay and benefits and support supplier diversity at the local level through our purchasing strategies.

We foster diversity, equity and inclusion through the training we provide to our supervisors, including FranklinCovey's unconscious bias training and our new supervisor LEAD training, which includes the following courses: 4 Essential Roles of Leadership, Speed of Trust and Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Ignite Everyone's Intelligence. Several groups in the organization have also held trainings to improve psychological safety.

6. How do you address unconscious bias in hiring and promotion processes?

When hiring, NorthWestern Energy uses a well-defined behavior-based interviewing technique that drives candidates to expand on their individual experience. The interviews help NorthWestern establish how a candidate's professional experience could benefit our business, based on past experiences. The interviews are conducted by a team, led by a trained human resource generalist, and consistent questions are asked of each candidate. Each member of the interview team objectively scores the candidate using an integrated scoring model. This same objective interview process is utilized for promotions.

NorthWestern attends many career and job fairs each year to attract and recruit talent from our region. That includes fairs at colleges, universities and trade schools in a six state region. We work to ensure that our career outreach includes opportunities to expand overall applicant diversity. We continuously evolve our diverse career outreach and recruiting program. For example, this spring's career fair tour includes seven tribal colleges.

We offer scholarships to students pursing current and future skill set needs to students attending universities, colleges or technical schools in our service areas.

We also provide unconscious bias training to our supervisors and human resource generalists, in addition to development messages in weekly supervisor emails.

7. Can you share how DEI has contributed to profitability?

In 2020, we released a Supplier Code of Conduct outlining our expectations for our suppliers. The work of all contractors, suppliers and vendors and their employees, agents and subcontractors (our suppliers) is critical to the success of our mission and directly reflects upon NorthWestern Energy.

Accordingly, our suppliers must also embody our "SERVICE" values of Safety, Excellence, Respect, Value, Integrity, Community and Environment. We also launched a supplier diversity program to diversify service and material suppliers. The program supports all types of small business ownership, including disadvantaged, women-owned, veteran-owned and minority owned businesses.

DEI, in terms of supplier diversity, allows NorthWestern to be eligible for Federal funding in the case that diverse suppliers are sourced for certain projects. By expanding our RFP (request for proposal) process to include diverse suppliers, we can both drive down pricing in our bid processes and encourage innovation.

8. Can you discuss any partnerships or collaborations you've pursued to enhance diversity and inclusion within the industry?

Industry plays a huge role in building relationships to help drive awareness of careers among underrepresented groups, enhancing diversity and inclusion. Here are several connections:

9. What role does leadership play in fostering a sense of belonging for employees from diverse backgrounds?

Our Board values the diversity of its members. When considering director nominees, our board strives to identify individuals that will provide insight to our board from a number of perspectives, with equal importance placed on gender, age, ethnicity, skills and background, as well as location of residence. Our board believes diversity is important because varied perspectives expand the board's ability to provide relevant guidance to our business.

50/50 Women on Boards, the leading global education and advocacy campaign driving the movement toward gender balance and diversity on corporate boards, recently commended NorthWestern Energy as a "3+" company, for having three or more women on its corporate board of directors. With four female directors — Sherina Edwards, Britt Ide, Linda Sullivan and Mahvash Yazdi — representing 50% of our independent corporate board seats, we have made a purposeful business decision aligning with independent research that demonstrates when three or more women serve on a board, profitability, productivity and workplace engagement increase.

In addition, half of our executive team is female.

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